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Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Social media and marketing managers today can find themselves spending a lot of time planning content to post. There are several considerations, from figuring out the best time to post to where each piece of content is promoted. If you're planning to post on Facebook as a business, approaching it strategically is key to success. After all, creating content for the largest social media platform on the planet is no small task. 

While simply publishing content on Facebook without any rhyme or reason may be tempting, the real key to generating significant audience engagement lies in knowing the who, what, when, why, and how of Facebook post creation. In this guide, we'll break down how to post on Facebook, what to create and share for your Facebook page, and the tips and tools you need to nail Facebook management. 

Looking to build out your social media management strategy? Download our Social Media Playbook to learn about creating, managing and analyzing a social media program across all of the major networks.

While Facebook isn't a "one-size-fits-all" social media platform, there are some basic elements of a Facebook post that you should include if you want to get more engagement from your audience and community. 

To be successful on Facebook you have to be able to understand the needs of your customer (or would-be customer).

An important Facebook marketing concept for companies to grasp is that you aren’t necessarily competing with other companies like yours — you’re competing with your potential customers’ friends and family — not to mention pop culture and puppy videos!

When it comes to offering value, think of creating enticing Facebook content like:

Don’t make it all about you, but do make it relevant to your brand’s industry.

Between posts from your family members, friends, brands, and coworkers, the Facebook News Feed can feel very over-crowded and oversaturated. But, most people are not reading the content shared — they are scrolling! People tend to quickly view and skim through posts, so you want to make sure that your post copy is short and sweet to catch the readers eye. 

It is recommended to keep your Facebook posts to about 40 characters, where engagement is at its maximum. The longer the post, the fewer comments, likes and shares you'll get from your audience. 

Facebook has studied on the number of clicks that different types of posts get on one's News Feed, and their studies suggest that Facebook posts with links (that generate their own image) perform better than posts with an image but no link to click.

When you share a post that contains a link, Facebook automatically pulls in information on the page’s title, description, and photos and places it in a link format. Here's an example from Meltwater's Facebook profile:

What action do you want people to take from your Facebook post? This is a question you need to ask yourself before posting. If you don't know the answer to this, then others won't either. 

Whether you’re looking to drive website traffic, boost sales or app downloads, or increase engagement, this won't happen unless you create a compelling reason for users to perform this action in your post. Try to use action words in your CTA, like download, subscribe, or register. 

Don’t be afraid, ask for what you want…

“Click the link to read our blog post.”

“Comment below and tell us how you feel about XYZ.”

Here are 40 calls-to-action you can use for Facebook to help spark more engagement on Facebook and make sure your content is actionable.

Whether you want to post on your own personal Facebook account or a Facebook Page, sharing content on Facebook can be done in a few simple steps:

Go to your Facebook Page (or personal profile)

Enter your copy in the "Write a post" section

Include some important elements, such as a link and image

Once you are finished, click "Share now" to publish your post

When it comes to publishing your post, there are 3 features to remember:

The content box is where you add your text or copy for your post. This is where you can either introduce a new product or service, share updates on an event or get people to sign up for your newsletter. Either way, this is where the text, link and image of your post will appear.

There are also options for you to select different content types to add to your post. This can be a poll, a milestone, a check-in or a feeling/activity. 

You also have different sharing options to choose where, when and to whom you would like your post to be shown. 

Once published, your post will appear on your Facebook Page's timeline as well as on the News Feed of people who like and follow your Page. 

Remember to bear in mind the time you choose to post on Facebook. If you don't know when the right time is for you to post on Facebook, use our infographic on the best times to post on social media as a guide﻿. You may want to test out different schedule times in order to reach your specific target audience but this infographic is helpful in giving you a starting point.

Tip: Keep in mind to use the right social media image sizes when it comes to posting on Facebook. Our ultimate guide to Facebook image sizes will help you.

Posting Facebook ads works differently than sharing an organic Facebook post because you have to use Facebook's Ad Manager. This is an ad creation tool that you can use to create and publish ads to Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

After you have created your ad, you can choose to publish it immediately or schedule it for a later date, but only Facebook Page admins have the ability to publish, view or edit ads.

Creating ads in Facebook occurs in three different stages:

Campaign level: This is where you select the ad objective, or the overall goal of your campaign.

Ad set level: This is where you define the target audience you'd like to reach, select your ad placements, determine your budget and set a schedule.

Ad level: This is where you will design the Facebook ads themselves. You can select your ad format, upload images, and add text, links or a video.

Create your campaign: From the main table in Ads Manager, select + Create to open the "Create a Campaign" window. Here, you will select the basic settings for your new campaign, ad set and ad. You can also use existing campaigns, ad sets or ads to create new ones.

Refine your settings: Select Continue to move on to the editing pane. This pane opens in an expanded view, but you can select the right-arrow to minimize it. In the editing pane, you will select a campaign objective, audience, placement and ad format.

Publish or save as draft: When you're ready, select Publish or Close to save your draft.

For example, you want to create an ad for your business in Ads Manager with the objective of building interest in your products or services, you might select the Brand Awareness objective. To start, you'll select + Create. In the Create a Campaign window, you have the option to choose the basic campaign, ad set and ad settings. Select Continue to enter the editing pane.

Here, select the Brand Awareness objective, then select Next. You will progress to the ad set level, where you will use your knowledge of your own target market to define your audience characteristics. Select Next to go to the ad level where you will select images or videos, and write engaging text. Finally, click Publish.

Read our designated blog for more detailed information about how to create Facebook ads.

Once you have created a Facebook Business Page﻿, managing it will be a continued effort to ensure that it reaps all the right rewards. 

Looking after a Facebook Business Page can be time-consuming if managed ineffectively, but with time and the right knowledge and tools, it can be doable. For a more centralized system, try Meltwater's Social Media Management Suite to manage incoming messages and schedule content. You can also manage your page by analyzing the Admin Panel, creating compelling content for posts and engaging with your audience on a daily basis are all keys to success when it comes to Facebook management.

Notifications display all the recent interactions on the page. It shows who ‘Likes’ your Business page or your content, if you’ve been tagged in any posts and if people want to attend any events that you’re organizing.

Insights provide information on the page’s activity since when it was launched.

Messages show any private messages sent from Facebook users.

Page Tips provides a link to Facebook’s internal marketing suite.

Managing a Facebook Business Page doesn't have to be a one-man job; you can assign different roles to people in your social media or marketing team as one of the following: 

Each of these roles will have a different amount of privilege and access to the Business Page, with the Facebook Page Manager having rights to everything. 

How to add a new admin to your Facebook page

Make sure the person you want to make an Admin ‘Likes’ the Business page

Click on the ‘Likes’ box in the top left-hand corner of the page and click ‘See All’.

Select who you want as Admin, and click ‘Make Admin’ then choose what role you want to assign them.

Whenever you or an admin sign in, they will see the Admin Panel.

With the tips shared in this post, together with taking the time to invest in your Facebook management efforts, you have everything you need to use Facebook Business Manager and make the most of your Facebook content, ads and marketing efforts.

Want to get the most out of your Facebook Page efforts? Read more about Meltwater's social media management suite or fill out the form below to book a 15-minute guided tour of our platform today!

Facebook Management Guide: How to Create Organic Posts & Ads on Facebook

Content marketing is essential for virtually all businesses, whether B2B or B2C. When it comes to capturing the attention of an audience in our message-saturated environment, content marketing becomes paramount as it can be an effective way to introduce your company to new prospects well before they are ready to buy. 

By offering the right mix of content assets, when the customer is ready to buy, the brand whose content helped shape their decision will be top-of-mind. 

How To Build Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content Calendar Template - Free download

Is Your Content Marketing Strategy In Shape?

Your content marketing strategy can also be referred to as a content marketing plan. It's a businesses strategic approach to creating, managing and distributing all content assets, including reporting and documenting success metrics. 

A content strategy typically involves a content calendar that will help you execute your content plan, broken down into deliverables on a yearly or quarterly basis. 

Before you sit down to craft your strategy, consider the why carefully: Why are you focusing on creating content in the first place? This will help establish the goals surrounding each piece (for example: are you writing first and foremost for SEO purposes, or perhaps putting on a webinar to promote a product?).  

B2B marketers who have a well thought out content strategy will be more successful than those that do not. A strategic approach to content production includes several important steps — from understanding your audience to being clear what point of the funnel a particular piece of content is serving to the promotion timeline.     

If you've already been creating content for some time without a clear content marketing strategy, it's a good idea to conduct a content audit. If you're doing this in-house, work with your content team and marketing plan to create a detailed list of content assets, and remember to include all assets such as email marketing, social media posts, and many more. Take a look at your current engagement statistics and use these as a benchmark once you've put your new content marketing strategy in place.

Your content marketing strategy should not be thought of as stagnant. It's important to evolve alongside the wider business objectives, to ensure you continue to support overall growth. But you need baseline content marketing goals to benchmark against so you can track your progress. As you continue to measure the impact of your content, you can be more effective and proactive when planning communications and campaigns. 

It's also a good idea to have productivity KPIs to keep your content production high. For example, the number of blog posts and webinars that you’ll need to complete on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Buyer personas and consumer data can enrich your understanding of your core customers and stakeholders, but you must start with a clear picture of who your customers are, how those people interact with your organization at each stage of their journey, as well as what motivates them to deepen their relationships with your brand. 

A social listening tool can help by monitoring conversations that your target audience is having and how your brand can help as well as understanding where your customers are having that conversation. This data will help you outline what type of content pieces to create and where to publish them.

With your personas in place, it’s important that you understand what the decision-making process is like for each of them, putting yourself in the shoes of your prospects and customers. The type of content that you’ll need to create for someone in the awareness phase is very different than the content a prospect about to make a final decision will need. Think about their questions, concerns, and information gaps that you can address on your website, via your blog, in video content, and other places. 

Work with your content team and internal stakeholders to create a customer journey map - outlining the journey that customers take as they learn about your company, buy your products, and telling others about them. Knowing this information, you can be far more strategic with how you communicate with them. Be sure to share the map with other teams as well - this helps ensure that sales, marketing, and customer success teams are on the same page—and keeps everyone’s focus on the customer. 

Publishing and promoting content can seem like a big job when you've got several channels to publish on at the same time. Tools like Meltwater's Social Media Publishing platform allow you to take control of your content scheduling and publishing with a social media management tool that's built for marketing and PR professionals. 

Once your content has been published, your job is not done. Now comes the most important part - make sure it gets seen by the most relevant eyes, so you can increase conversions, and measuring the metrics to see how you're pacing against your goals. Within the same Meltwater tool, it provides your social analytics and PR coverage monitoring in one place.

Lastly, don't fall into the trap that many companies do of viewing their content as "one and done". Your content doesn't need to have a short shelf life after you've completed the initial publishing and promotion. In fact, it can (and should) live many lives! Keep your article updated, and find ways to reuse the content, such as creating a video version, or atomizing small chunks into short-form content like TikToks or Instagram Reels. You should always be thinking about other ways you can promote content, multiple times, after publishing.

The struggle and pressure to constantly produce high performing content is a major concern for most businesses. Your content marketing strategy absolutely needs a strong and robust content creation schedule, with enough writers to support it, to help ensure you maintain a continuous stream of high-quality content. 

While your defining your content creation strategy you can start using the information you gathered in the previous steps to discuss content ideas with your internal stakeholders and align them to your goals. Here, you can also discuss what types of content will appeal to your audience and what channels they're using. Using a content planner or editorial calendar can help to keep all your content ideas and scheduled content in one place.

How To Write A Content Plan

A great place to start mapping out your variety of content is in an editorial calendar. These calendars help visualize content gaps and ensure you are covering a broad spectrum of topics and content types.

It can be as simple as a spreadsheet shared within your team, but be honest about your team’s bandwidth and resources. Only a content production schedule designed to optimize both consistency and quality will allow you to successfully connect with customers and prospects and ultimately create successful lead generation. We have designed a free downloadable editable content calendar template to get you started.

In order to maximize the success of your content strategy, here are 5 key considerations that can improve your content performance:

Companies that focus on quality win out over companies that focus on volume. While, yes, quantity is extremely important for SEO, if you't focusing on quantity only and skimping on quality, then you're not going to get anywhere anyway. High-quality articles will attract traffic and encourage conversions (email subscribes, multiple pages per session, shares, etc) — and these metrics signal to the almighty Google that your article is worth showing higher in search results. It's a win-win.

A high-quality piece of content is also more likely to be shared on social media and will grab the attention of other industry stakeholders. Creating meaningful campaigns, posts or publications can also position your company as active and valuable in the thought leadership space, or as an expert or educator. 

Think about what terms a potential reader might use to find your content. (Don't rely on your intuition though. Do keyword research using tools like AHREFs or Google’s keyword planner). Establish your primary keyword and three to five variations BEFORE you start writing. Be sure to include your keyword naturally and avoid keyword stuffing. New to writing for SEO? Check out our ultimate guide to writing SEO optimized content.

Best practice for long form content writing today is to have a clear hierarchy on the page. Have just one H1, followed by H2s to support your keyword. This helps Google, but also makes the reading experience more pleasant for users.

Define tone of voice and formality of the content

This is a great time to seek support from colleagues if you need their input also. Define who and what you need from them.

Also, article length matters. Aim for between 301 and 500 words as a minimum or more if you need to go into a topic in depth. If your article is shorter it hurts your SEO. If it is longer than 1500, you might not have a tight, focused, high-impact idea. Consider breaking a long article into a multi-part series. This can help your SEO strategy by providing great opportunities for internal linking. 

Break up your content with visuals such as photos, illustrations, graphs, icons, logos. This is especially important to avoid enormous blocks of text. For instance, a professional PowerPoint presentation writing service relies heavily on balancing concise text with impactful icons and graphs to maintain engagement.

Name the image file using the central keyword. If “content calendar” is the keyword, you could change the image name from IMG_20150805.jpg to Content_Calendar.jpg. Make sure the alt-text also contains the keyword to help show search engines relevance.

SEO uses links as a signal of authority. Both links out and links in are helpful for telling Google it is a legit piece of content. If your PR team is involved in the promotion, make sure they approach it as a link-building opportunity. If a high-domain site (such as the New York Times) links to your article, that's a great way to help your article's visibility. Be mindful of using good anchor text for your links!

6. Provide metadata that includes your keyword  

Create a title of ~55 characters and a description of ~115 characters. Be sure to use the keyword in your post URL and on all alt-tags on the page. Use a snippet preview tool like Sistrix to help you stay within the optimal character count. 

A good habit to get into is writing your social content at the same time you are writing your blog. While the subject is fresh in your mind, jot down enticing questions or facts that will encourage conversation and help drive traffic to the blog. 

As we mentioned above, once a piece of content is published, the real work has only just begun. The next step is to dig into the "marketing" side and share it and build up readership! Here are some top tips for making sure you attract eyes to the content you worked so hard on.

Social media plays a critical role in content marketing as one of the quickest and easiest channels for promotion. Content is the fuel that keeps the social media “engine” humming, as people share and re-share content they’ve discovered or that someone else has shared with them. Posting is the easy part, but generating that buzz is where the skill comes in. 

Building relationships on social platforms can connect you with other industry influencers who are a huge asset for promoting your brand to new prospects. Establishing relationships on social lays the groundwork for increased viewership on your work. It is very much a "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" culture. Engaging and sharing other people’s content before you have something to share is a key part of building your social foundation. 

Your employees are a great cheerleading source for your content, and can go a long way toward giving it a boost on social media. Use an internal newsletter or messaging channel to make employees aware of the content and encourage them to share it. You can also take this further and develop your own employee brand ambassador program!

3. Align content marketing and advertising efforts

Content marketing and, ideally your content schedule, should be aligned with other facets of your marketing strategy and messaging. You may want to do some specific paid promotions for some of your content via PPC or Facebook ads, in which case you will need to work in tandem with your digital marketing and paid social teams.

Remember that effective content is never about a quick sell; it’s about becoming a trusted source of information, whether that information is filling a niche query or broad need. Instead of positioning content to answer customer needs in the form of products, effective content is positioned to answer customer needs in the form of information and value.

In addition to tracking the numbers of shares, comments, and other engagement metrics, it’s important to see what people are saying about your content. This is where social media monitoring comes in. You can use a tool like Meltwater to monitor brand mentions, sentiment, specific keywords, and industry influencers. Then you can then see which pieces of content are working in terms of performance and which are not. Use your reporting insights to draw actionable insights and improve your content strategy.

5. Engage with people who share and comment

Engagement on social media is not a  one way street. The brands that succeed are the ones that also participate in the conversation. In addition to monitoring mentions and shares, engaging with people who responded to your content can be a very powerful way to broaden your reach and connect with potential prospects or industry stakeholders.

It's important to always continue refining your content plan.

A simple rule of thumb is this: whatever’s working; do more of it. Whatever’s not working; do less of it. Be flexible and test new things as well. Conversion based on content takes time and focused efforts. Patience, persistence, and a positive outlook yield results. You may not be able to immediately see a conversion, but if you are patient, you will see the impact of your content marketing as the analytics become more accurate and you have trend data to reference.

To find out how you can use media monitoring to support your content marketing strategy fill out the form below! 

How To Build an Effective Content Marketing Strategy [Content Calendar Template]

If you’re blogging for your business, you probably already know the stats.

B2B marketers who have a blog they update regularly receive 67% more leads than those who don’t. Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to see positive ROI. Businesses who blog receive 97% more links to their website.

But you know all that. You know that there are a million reasons why blogging can be extremely beneficial to your business.

However, you probably also know that every time you post one of your thoughtful, insightful, carefully crafted blog posts, a million other bloggers are doing the exact same thing. (That’s not an exaggeration, by the way. In 2014, there were 1.5 million posts on WordPress every single day.)

That knowledge can be disheartening — after all, with so much blog content being pumped out every day, how do you make sure the content you’re putting out there as part of your content marketing strategy stands out from the rest?

Today, I want to look at the five biggest mistakes bloggers make that turn readers off, so you can learn to avoid them:

Mistake #4: Bad Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation

Mistake #5: Writing What You Want to Read; Not What Your Audience Wants to Read

Reading tip: How To Amplify Your Brand With a Blogger Outreach Campaign

The fact that most bloggers aren’t always professional or polished writers is part of the appeal for readers, but it does mean that they can be prone to using tired literary devices, including clichés. Especially clichés.

While hardly exhaustive, here’s a list of some of the phrases I’ve noticed are frequently overused by bloggers:

By taking steps to exclude cliches from your writing (and believe me, I know that it can be difficult), you’re ensuring your content is both unique and authoritative. The list I’ve included is just a sample, of course (you can find a thoroughly comprehensive list here), but if you avoid those to begin with, you’re off to a great start.

So many bloggers spend hours conceptualizing, researching, writing, and proof-reading an article, then slap a terrible stock image on it and call it a day. I find this staggering – it’s like spending hours making a beautiful meal, then eating it with your hands off a paper plate. Why not go to the effort of presenting something you’ve worked hard on in a beautiful way?

The key to creating a great header image is to avoid using tired, overused images that we’ve all seen a thousand times.

You know the ones I mean. A pile of coins with a plant sprouting out of it for an article on investment. A golden egg in a nest for an article on retirement. A photo of two men in suits shaking hands and smiling beatifically for an article on business.

Take the time to find a unique image with nice composition for your article. This may mean choosing something that’s a little esoteric. Pixabay, Morguefile and Death to Stock are all great resources.

Depending on the blog you’re posting your article to, you may need to layer your article title on top of your chosen image, using photo editing software. While Photoshop is obviously hegemonic, free online resources such as Pixlr and Fotor are absolutely fine for this purpose. Just remember two things:

Make sure you know the dimensions your header needs to be, to ensure your title isn’t cut off at all

Choose your fonts judiciously; a tasteful font (I generally prefer sans-serif) is your best bet

An indelible fact of life is that people hate being sold to, which is why I always give a wide berth to those people trying to push credit cards in shopping malls.

Blogs are great for positioning yourself as a subject matter expert and building your brand, but they’re not a sales tool. If your blog posts are little more than thinly-veiled ads for your product or service, you’re wasting time creating content that no one really wants to read.

The way most bloggers and content marketers do this is to write an article discussing a particular (often exaggerated) problem at length, then explaining how their product or service can solve that problem. This, incidentally, is the exact same formula infomercials use.

Rather than shamelessly shoving sales spiels in the faces of your readers, you’re better off taking the time to create meaningful, valuable content for your readers.

As mentioned earlier, bloggers are generally not professional writers, which means things like spelling and grammar can fall through the cracks. They’re/their/there, for example, is just one of a few incredibly common mistakes that even the most conscientious of bloggers make every now and then. Thankfully, you don’t need to be an English major to write a strong, grammatically correct blog post. You just need to steer clear of the most common — and therefore most vexing — spelling and grammar mistakes people make.

They’re vs their vs there ("they’re" is a contraction meaning "they are", "their" is a possessive referring to something belonging to a group of people, and "there" can be used to mean a location or description such as "there is")

Lose vs loose (to "lose" is to get rid of something, "loose" is something that isn’t tight)

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